


what's new pussycat?

by arashiyama (harukatenoh)



Category: World Trigger
Genre: Cats, Gen, border agents test the effectiveness of cats as therapy animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-21 17:49:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12462789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harukatenoh/pseuds/arashiyama
Summary: Border is full of school age students. Access to reconstructible, temporary bodies and fighting facilities was usually fine, but during exam season things tended to get out of hand. However, this time around, Border agents find better ways of dealing with the terror of oncoming examinations.





	what's new pussycat?

**Author's Note:**

> hey. guess who it is, up and coming senior graduate with about 2 weeks til final exams, writing fic about their fave characters suffering in their position instead of studying. it's me. i'm terrible.  
> world trigger makes for such good gen fics. also this is based off a text from last night text, bc i love that shit sm. http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/Text-Replies-11951.html
> 
> fic title is from the iconicwhat's new pussycat by tom jones

A quiet day working in Border was unheard of. When your job consisted mainly of fending off invading aliens and sometimes invading those aliens right back, you couldn’t really expect the workplace to be anything resembling normal.

That was why exam season at Border tended to be a very… tedious time for most. A bunch of fourteen to twenty-one year olds, all dealing with stress, all with access to bodies that could not be permanently damaged. It made for some interesting stories to tell, and the battle rooms often saw much more use than usual.

However, it was unusually quiet this year. Shinoda was checking in on the solo battle grounds to make sure nobody was getting carried away with blowing off steam, but it was eerily deserted. He thought that he could hear some kind of commotion, though not from anywhere near him.

It sounded a lot like it was coming from the sniper training rooms, which gave Shinoda pause. He was both curious and dreading because that truly did not forebode well for the youth of Border, or for the engineers who had only recently upgraded the area. With heavy feet and light breathing, he made his way towards the noises. He had drawn the short straw in the meeting HQ had earlier, after all.  Checking up on the kids was now his duty.

Because apparently, the upper echelons of Border couldn’t handle some stressed teenagers without being forced into it by the cruel hand of fate. Not even a roster. Nothing but dirty, traitorous chance.

(It was his fifth time this examination period that he had to deal with potentially crying students.)

The first thing he could hear clearly was the unmistakable voice of the B-rank agent Kageura, yelling loudly.

“Move the fuck over, you’ve been here for ages!”

Shinoda took in a deep breath.

“Now, now, Kage,” came the softer response from—Shinoda recognized the speaker as Arafune, though why Arafune would be caught up in whatever stress-relieving-possibly-dangerous activities that were going on with his good grades, Shinoda wasn’t sure.

He rounded the corner.

Sitting on the floor of the sniper training range, half of them out of their trigger bodies, was a rather assorted collection of Border agents. Shinoda couldn’t recognize them all, but he could at least recognize they weren’t doing anything overtly risky. Most of them didn’t even look up when he entered the room, their focus on…

A cat, sitting in the number one sniper Touma’s lap. Kageura was glowering at Touma as he cradled the animal, who didn’t seem to be put off by the amount of people vying for its attention in the least.

Somebody in the room sat up from where they had been lying down, out of Shinoda’s sight, and waved at him. Ah, it was Kei, a grin on his face already.

“Shinoda-san! Hello!” Kei called, drawing the attention of the rest of the room to Shinoda. There was a brief moment of awkwardness, when the nervousness in the room at the sight of him was almost tangible, before he nodded and replied to Kei.

“Good afternoon, Kei. I trust exam revision is going well?” He cast a critical eye around the room. Notes and textbooks were scattered around the edge of the group, so he could acknowledge they were at least attempting to get something done. Of course, the guilty looks on most of the agents’ faces betrayed that quickly.

“Of course, of course!” Kei said, outright ignoring the tense looks all the other agents were giving each other.

At this moment, the cat in Touma’s lap had decided it had had enough, stretching out and then walking out from between Touma’s crossed legs. The atmosphere in the room went still as all the Border agents in the room, including Shinoda, watched its movements with bated breath.

The cat approached a young girl with auburn hair who was lying down and staring in despair at the maths textbook in front of her. It walked across the textbook to stand in front of her face, then gently licked her cheek.

“Please help me pass my maths exam, Mr. Kitty!” The girl whined pitifully as the cat curled up next to her face.

There were murmurs about how lucky Nire—he assumed that was the name of the girl in question—was, and the room slowly came to life again. People returned to their open books and sheets of notes, occasionally casting glances at the cat as if they were hoping they would be the next fortunate recipient of its affection.

Well, it definitely didn’t seem harmful. Out of all of the ways Border’s members had come up with to deal with exams, this seemed like the best. Additionally, the most productive. Shinoda, satisfied with what he had found, perhaps even extending to pleasantly surprised, took his leave from the room with a well-wish.

“Good luck then, agents. Study hard.”

There were thank yous and more shuffling of paper following him out of the room. Well. He wasn’t exactly sure what Border’s policy on keeping pets at HQ was, but he sure had a story to tell the rest of the council when he returned.

* * *

The end of examinations was upon Border. It was met with the lightest atmosphere that had graced Border’s halls for weeks, full of laughing and relieved students as they went about their afternoons chatting and comparing.

Shinoda, on a whim, decided to visit the temporary petting zoo that had been set up in the sniper training ranges to see how effective the new studying strategy had been. He had high hopes for the youth of Border this time around—lord knows he had been awful at studying when he was in highschool—with their new way of managing stress, even if he was slightly concerned at the cat being so crowded.

He drew nearer to the rooms, already picking up on the clamour that came from inside.

"How did you go, Kou?"

“It was fine.” That was the steady voice of Murakami, number four attacker and owner of some of Border’s most exemplary grades. If only Shinoda could say the same about the other top-tier attackers.

"I failed. I definitely failed." Was another comment brightly said, from who Shinoda suspected to be Yoneya Yousuke.

"Me too!"

"Our only hope rests on that bullet fool's shoulders!"

"Izumin-senpai, please pull through!"

“How was your exam Tachikawa-san? Maths, right?” The voice who asked that was unfamiliar to Shinoda, but he had a lot of interest in the answer.

He stopped just before rounding the corner into the training range, curious at what Kei had to say.

Kei’s characteristic brash laugh rang out, and the reply that followed was “On the last problem of the exam I just drew a picture of a cat and left.”

Shinoda sighed. Regardless of new and improved revision techniques, some things just didn’t change.

**Author's Note:**

> i will stop making fun of tachikawa when he stops being so easy to make fun of. which is never, probably.  
> 


End file.
